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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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it's because treating the problem of drugs like a personal moral failing offers nothing but punishment, without addressing the root cause of people with addiction. Instead of putting people in prison for drugs, (in which they still have access to drugs) we would rather help them address the underlying cause of hardship that causes them to want to "check out" so badly. People in poverty, with untreated illness, little to no support system, without access to a safe place to live, are going to want to check out via drug use. Us punishing them isn't going to do anything but give them another reason to shoot up.
work programs, housing programs, food programs, and healthcare is what they truly need to stop. Not us spending the same amount of money it would take to help them, but on the prison industrial complex.
Yeah, I agree putting people in prison won't solve addiction but that's why I mentioned what I somewhat remember Maine doing. It's about having a path towards rehabilitation (not in prison). Essentially you temporarily book offenders, then they get a court mandated ruling to go to these clinics to get better while they have consistent checkups. This way they get to stay out of prison while receiving treatment. I guess what I'm saying is you need the law to allow temporary detainment and to enable court rulings of certain treatments that otherwise many offenders would not receive otherwise. The problem I see isn't with these situations it's that oftentimes legislators are too lazy to implement laws that work to implement steps after being detained/fined. It's lazy to put people in jail and also to simply decriminalize substances. Because when substances are decriminalized you have no legal leg to stand on when you need to force treatment and to your point being sent to prison doesn't help either.
This sounds nice, but addicts don't just stop being addicts. Losing a home may have resulted in someone getting addicted to heroin, but giving them a home won't stop the addiction. Prison isn't the place to treat addiction either though.
You have to address the addiction first though.
healthcare includes therapy, mental health, and addiction treatment.
Related to my other post, what I'm trying to say is that these programs are all important and I agree that these parts are often overlooked in legislation. My argument though is that these programs by themselves also won't fix these issues. You sometimes need to court mandate these people to use these services. Maybe after being detained for illegal use they are sent to a rehab center for a certain amount of time, then they are released from rehab but need to checkin at a clinic at certain intervals to ensure they're on their meds and so on. There needs to be a legal system in place to ensure these people get the care they need because many don't bother or can't get the care on their own.